Class Struggle 96

August/September 2011

Class Struggle 96

August/September 2011

Brief Stuff
Quake Quake City sees Red
Christchurch city workers are organising to oppose the worst effects of the disaster capitalist solution to the rebuilding of Christchurch. To recap, our analysis shows that CHCH as a microcosm of current rightwing solutions to the impact of global crisis is Aotearoa. The NACTs have legislated for direct cabinet rule of Christchurch in a state of emergency that will see the disaster used as a pretext to restructure capital in the region. This means the liquidation of much fixed capital and its reallocation from small capitalists to the big Canterbury and national and international corporates. We saw the first move in this direction with the man-made earthquake of the sacking of Ecan to allow big dairy farmers to grab cheap water rights. Now as we predicted, The Press reports: The Central Christchurch recovery is under threat as quake-weary property owners start using their insurance money to buy new buildings in Auckland and overseas. rail link starting point. Opposition is thus becoming widespread. After months of autocratic refusal to allow the citizens of the worst affected areas of CHCH into the plans for their futures, they are now mobilising in their neighbourhoods and all across the Red Zone to get answers and to get full compensation. This grassroots mobilisation looks like it could become a major factor in deciding the upcoming election.

Pike River Mine Exposed

The Royal Commission of Inquiry in to the Pike River Mine Disaster is exposing officially what anyone with half a brain knew at the time. Even John Key back in June told an audience in Australia that Pike River Mine, a coal mine prone to methane leaks, would have been illegal in Australia. The mine had only one ventilation shaft which had a fan below ground that would be destroyed in an explosion. This shaft was also totally unsuited as an emergency exit even though the CEO Peter Whittall still defends it as adequate. Safety manager Neville Rockhouse who lost his youngest son Benjamin, 21, told how his older son Daniel, one of two who survived the explosion, had not reported his safety concerns to his father because of peer pressure. Rockhouse also said he was on the point of resigning as safety manager because he did not think the ventilation shaft was adequate as an escape route and kept pressing management to build a fresh air base. He is backed up by former manager Doug White who said that the mine has no plan to deal with an explosion and no adequate real time monitoring of faults.

Equally, it means the liquidation of much variable (living labour) capital as workers are shunted around, forced out of their munted homes and into the already flooded reserve army of unemployed. So now we have the worst affected Red Zone areas planned for evacuation with compensation offers for relocation at 2007 levels. The elite manipulation of property values through slow release of new sections is dispossessing many former homeowners in East Christchurch, especially of working-class Pakeha, Maori, Polynesians and Asians. National Party investors and land developers have formed a neo-feudal aristocracy with "tangata whenua" - Ngi Tahu Holdings Corporation and Ngi Tahu Property - for direct rule through CERA that has subordinated egalitarian democracy and its vestige in the elected Christchurch City Council, which is fragmenting. The capitalist dictatorship has here become overt and very apparent, historically unconscious of the implications of its outright liquidation of social democracy in Canterbury - the major political dynamic. The reactionary nature of "political correctness" around Maori nationalism has thus been starkly revealed. Frustration is pent-up on this and the growing range of economic issues. Another example is the rail transport proposal in the "presidential-style" Mayor's Central City Plan, which - contrary to the recovery needs of urban Rangiora, Kaiapoi, Rolleston, Hornby and Lyttelton - prioritises business demands with a brand new and expensive CBD-to-University

Following this evidence the spokesperson for the families of the 29 dead miners Bernie Monk said: These guys went into a death trap. They had nowhere to go and it has always been in the hearts of the families and now its out there. Monk was also critical of the incompetent rescue operation that gave the families false hope when experienced miners were telling them there was no hope. Years of funding cuts to government regulators, removal of mandatory inspections, and pressure to produce a profit, combined to make the mine a death trap. Key still promises that the men will be recovered, but its now up to the miners unions to make sure that the mine doesnt begin working again before the men are recovered. The least that Key can do is to immediately reinstate compulsory mine inspections and union monitored health and safety regulations, while fully compensating the families.

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But dont hold your breath as the NACT regime is pushing hard for mining to pull the economy out of a hole. And behind this tragedy is the fact that predatory, destructive capitalism puts its profits before peoples lives. That the only assurance that mines can be safe is to put mining in Aotearoa under public ownership and workers control.

August/September 2011
made respectable as biculturalism or multiculturalisn by the dominant white culture. On the other hand, 'reverse racism' is not really racism since it cant be imposed. If it could then Maori would be running the country and whites would be complaining about being at the bottom of the heap. So-called reverse racism is no more than the expression of historic grievances of the colonial past being reproduced today as Maori marginalised off their land and concentrated in the so-called 'underclass'. White racists hide their racism by trying to claim that this grievance-driven resentment is equally if not more pervasive and potent as European racism. Some Maori recompense has been made, especially to iwi corporate elites, but only by begging the state to redress past wrongs and playing by the rules of capitalism that even Brash can agree with. But begging is hardly the action of racists even iwi elites. And if the begging begins to look like special treatment then the racists come rushing out to cry one law for all. In the final analysis New Zealand remains a racist country and the evidence for that is the majority support for the NACT regime that continues to plunder land and resources, most recently the Foreshore and Seabed, preventing any possibility of Maori emerging from marginalisation into economic selfsufficiency. So long as NZ remains a capitalist semi-colony dependent on land based resources ultimately stolen from Maori, so will racism continue to be part of the fabric of society.

Racist White Immigrants

Margaret Mutu (above), Professor of Maori Studies at Auckland University, generated a storm when she called for white migrants to NZ to be screened for white supremacist attitudes. She based her view on findings of a Department of Labour survey that found that more Maori than others were negative towards immigrants. According to Mutu, Maori feel very threatened as more groups come in and swamp them. Most of the storm of opposition that followed rejected Mutus comments as themselves racist for discriminating against white migrants on the basis of "colour, race or nationality" the official Race Relations Office definition. Mutu was attacked by some for making the statement as an academic but was correctly defended by her Vice Chancellor and others on the grounds of academic freedom. Her response was that she was making a considered statement based on the evidence, and as a Maori she could not be racist in commenting on white supremacy because she was not in a position of power. We agree with Mutu. You cannot be a racist unless you impose your views on an oppressed group by means of power. Being an individual, even Professor, does not give you the power to do that. Thinking that other people, tribes or family members are different and inferior is not racism unless you can oppress the other in such as way as to materially gain by it in the long term. Historically racism, as we know it today, was invented by European colonisers to classify non-Europeans as subhuman to justify ripping off their riches and impose white supremacist rule. The Catholic Church had a huge upheaval before it recognised Native Americans as humans capable of salvation. It took a couple of centuries for black Africans to achieve this select status. When direct colonial rule was overturned lots of white racists retreated to countries where they attitudes where not challenged. The British in India went home. NZ was already colonised by a settler population of white supremacists who professed equal citizenship but stole the land and went to war against self-rule. Racism in NZ was used to justify the colonial domination and destruction of Maori society to turn land into private property and drive Maori into the reserve army of labour. Post WW2 de-colonisation' saw NZ open up to a big flow of kith and kin from post-colonial Africa and Britain and in this country racist attitudes were usually unchallenged because they were hidden or accepted as normal. Such 'kith and kin' are still preferred migrants today. So there is some truth to what Mutu says. In many cases racists dont recognise they are racists because racism has been institutionalised and

Sexy Hands on Sexy Education

Teachers simulating sounds of orgasm for their students; oral and anal sex as alternatives to vaginal penetration; how to masturbate; pulling condoms over black plastic penises. These activities could be part of the story line of any number of the pornographic videos making billions for their owners on the internet. But no, this is the gist of sex education in some Auckland, New Zealand, schools. Yet instead of widespread sighs of relief knowing that their kids are being prepared to navigate the delights of commercial sexploitation in the capitalist world, a full blown moral panic is spreading among Auckland parents. Letters to the editor from stiff and uptight in East Auckland, from over and out in West Auckland, all complain that they never had such a good time while they were at school. There is such a shortage of black penises in their neighbourhood they want to know if adult night classes are available. Now that it is no longer politically correct to lynch people to get erections it seems common sense to stop simulating and do the real thing. After all the kids are doing it, so lets allow them the right of ownership and control over their bodies and not reserve that right for parents, porno kings, sex slave traders, rapists and the Dominique Strauss Kahns of this world. Less simulation, more sexuality.

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August/September 2011

NZ: Mana and Labour

Once again the parliamentary road to nowhere is hitting the election campaign trail, coming to a TV and a public gathering near you. So why should we take it more seriously than the Rugby World Cup? Lining up to run the treasury benches on behalf of the ruling class, the open capitalist parties spin illusions, going forward for the good of the nation. While to the capitalist class they promise to make the working class pay for the capitalist crisis; and restore capitalists their profits, to the big majority of voters who are workers they say that only a second National and Act Government can pay down debt and return to nation to economic prosperity. The NACT regime remains popular despite a major shift in wealth from the very rich from those under the average wage; an anti-democratic move to direct cabinet rule as we have seen over legislation rushed through under urgency, and special legislation to rule by cabinet appointees in Environment Canterbury, CERA in Christchurch, RWC, and most recently the retrospective legislation in reaction to the collapse of the case against 13 of the Urewera 17, to make Police video spying legal. If National is re-elected it will need Act and the Maori Party, both of which have promoted privatisation of public assets, to press ahead with its promise to partially privatise (49%) of the public power generators and Air NZ. outside parliament that can take a class stand to save the planet. The Maori Party was a 2004 split from Labour based on a Maori nationalist kaupapa over the Foreshore and Seabed confiscation. But it was quickly dominated by the petty bourgeois leadership and the corporate capitalist iwi leaders forum. Instead of taking direct action on the F&S it chose to form a coalition with the open bourgeois parties National and Act to win control of the Foreshore and Seabed. They have been disappointed but will go back into coalition next time to try again. To prove their loyalty to the capitalists they have thrown out Hone Harawira and a large section of the working class Maori membership. The formation of the Mana Party is the result. Mana is standing to the left of Labour party

Manas Program
Mana policy is for Maori, for workers and for the poor. This means that Mana stands for all sections of the working class and workers branches are becoming established. Vote Mana for real change; party vote Mana for an independent voice for Maori, for workers and for the poor. The Mana programme is to Abolish Goods and Services Tax (GST); establish a Financial Transaction Tax ("Hone Heke" Tax); nationalise monopolies and duopolies. Mana policy would seem to shift the tax balance onto the rich from the poor. It is more of a challenge to capitalism than the Labour party policies.

Middle Class Parties

The Green Party doesnt challenge capitalism. It presents itself as a middle class party able to serve the interests of both the capitalists and the working class majority. It advocates measures to create jobs and build houses and promote a green capitalism. It has been moving right to position itself to put pressure on capitalists. The only two socialist MPs in the Greens have left (Sue Bradford) or are about to leave (Keith Locke). The Greens have no roots in the Unions. Meanwhile the economic motor of capitalism exploits nature to death and the Greens have no social base

Labour is a bourgeois workers party

Labour is also a bourgeois party but with a history of links to the labour movement. Labour continues to have the support of better paid workers, and the labour bureaucracy the trade union officials. Large CTU unions retain their affiliation to Labour (eg. SFWU, EPMU), while former TUF (Trade Union Federation) unions, now back in the CTU fold have renewed their

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affiliation to Labour (eg. MUNZ). The trade union apparatus continues to be used to promote Labour through the CTU. This explains why the Labour Party has lost the support of low paid workers who are overwhelmingly Maori, women and youth. And why Goff is facing no pressure to agree to work with Mana in government. Our review of the results of the last election showed that the Labour party lost because a large part of the low paid working class did not get out and vote for Labour. It had lost confidence in Labour. Realising this the Labour party tries to attract working class voters again, with promises to defend some workers, and makes left sounding policy to take GST off food and to introduce a 15% capital gains tax, and make the first $5000 tax free. These things are small reforms that would favour the poor rather than the rich. It is likely then that some of these workers who did not vote last time will decide to vote Labour this time. These workers like those who support Mana will be looking for a Labour Government in which Mana MPs pull Labour to the left.

August/September 2011
into parliament. In all the other Maori electorates a Mana Party vote is important. The Mana Party is calling on its supporters to vote for its candidates in all Maori seats. As well as that we think that Mana should invite Labour supporters to vote for Mana candidates to defeat Maori Party MPs Sharples, Turia, Flavell and Katene.

We need a Revolutionary Party

Communist Workers Group has no confidence that parliament can meet the needs of the working class. The state exists to perpetuate the rule of the capitalist class and subjugate the working class: it is a capitalist state. For a party to really be able to deliver for workers we need to smash the capitalist system and takeover the running of the economy at the point of production. We need to organise outside parliament, away from election campaigning and the political posturing of those suits. Workers need more than election promises; We need Fighting democratic unions Build Workers councils that will lead the fight for Full employment reduce the working week (without loss of pay) until everyone is employed. Occupy all workplaces that close or sack workers. Take back state asets under workers control: Telecom, Air NZ, BNZ, ANZ, ASB, Airports, Buses, railways, water services, council services, all the power stations, radiowaves, forestry (where the owner is not working them), under workers control with no compensation. No privatisations; expropriate from the capitalist thieves. Full citizenship rights for migrant workers; free healthcare and free education! For a General Strike against the system that is destroying us all in the name of profit. Revolution! take all capitalism under workers control for a national council of workers representatives. For a Workers and working Farmers Government! For a Socialist Aotearoa in a United Socialist States of the Pacific.

Vote Mana and Labour

Both Mana and the Labour party are bourgeois-workers parties; that is they look like parties for the working class, they have policy that looks like it could be helpful to the working class, they have workers joining them and in Labours case unions affiliated, but we believe that when we put them to the test of being in government, they will just carry on the running of bourgeois society (capitalism). Because some of the working class believe in Mana &/or Labour, our challenge is to put these parties to the test of being in power. But for that to happen Labour and Mana need the most MPs between them possible so that a Labour-Mana government is elected. This also means defeating the Maori Party and lessening the chances of the re-election of a National coalition. This means tactical voting to get as many Mana Party votes as possible and Maori electorate tactical voting to keep the Maori Party out. For tactical voting we suggest:

General electorates: Vote Labour electorate candidates and Mana party vote. In the Maori electorates:Te Tai Tokerau: Vote Hone Harawira (Mana) for the electorate and Mana Party vote. If Hone doesnt win then Mana will have to get 5% of the national party vote to get MPs 5

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August/September 2011

Advance the Libyan Revolution!

End of Gaddafi Regime
The Libyan revolution is the re-opening of a national, democratic, anti-imperialist revolution, notwithstanding NATO military intervention. This is proved by the defeat of the 42-year-long proimperialist Gaddafi semi-fascist dictatorship at the hands of the popular militias. While NATO softened up Gaddafi's forces and co-opted the TNC to impose a 'democratic transition', it has yet to show it can contain the popular armed militias and hold on to Libya as an imperialist oil colony. NATO will brag about its success in Libya in defeating Gaddafi but we give the ranks of the revolutionaries the major credit for this victory, and unlike most of the Western liberal left recognise their historic revolutionary agency. The revolutionary communists never equated the base of the rebellion with the pro-imperialist TNC nor said that the intervention of NATO would be the deciding factor in this war. We always saw the rebellion as the reopening of the national revolution that to succeed would have to become permanent revolution. But against this revolutionary perspective much of the Western 'left' operates with a schematic view of the national question which separates it from the class question. This schema has its material base in the social imperialism of the labour aristocracy. The reformists have illusions in 'democratic' imperialism while the 'third worldists' have illusions in progressive national leaders. Both are the 'left' version of the imperialist (Eurocentric, Orientalist) 'civilising mission'. Western liberal reformists are tied by their class interests to 'democratic' imperialism. The idea that imperialism could, especially in its UN guise, be 'humanitarian' and intervene to prevent a massacre in Benghazi is to argue that in some situations imperialism can be 'progressive' in offering a helping hand to sponsor 'democracy'. But since imperialism came on the scene in the 19th century it has been the enemy of bourgeois democracy. It has fought thousands of wars to stop the bourgeois national-democratic revolutions from coming to fruition. It is doing so today notably in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The intervention of NATO at the invitation of the TNC was no different. It took sides with one faction of the Libyan national bourgeoisie against Gaddafi, for the purpose of containing and limiting the national-democratic revolution and to impose a new neo-colonial regime. The fact that it doesnt in Bahrain, Saudia Arabia or Syria simply means that imperialism is not yet ready for regime change in those countries. More dangerous than the openly pro-imperialist liberal reformists is the deceptive reverse side of social imperialism - 'third worldism' - the view that a section of the national bourgeoisie can lead a popular front or an anti-imperialist united front to a victorious revolution. This explains why the most fake Trotskyists lined up with black nationalists and the '21st century socialists', Castro and Chavez, to back Gaddafi against imperialism and the insurrection. It also explains why the left reformist SWP thinks that NATO in backing the TNC faction of the national bourgeoisie has usurped the revolutionary agency of the 'rebels' and that the counter-revolution has won. For these Mensheviks if there is no progressive bourgeois faction in place, then there is no leadership of the national revolution. Social imperialism in both guises denies revolutionary agency to the semi-colonial masses and misplaces it in the petty bourgeois intelligentsia of the imperialist countries. History will consign these social imperialists to the dustbin. The Libyan revolutionaries who had taken a strong anti-imperialist position in the early days of the rebellion had little choice but to enter into a military bloc with NATO against the semi-fascist Gaddafi. At this point the semi-fascist Gaddafi regime has been defeated by the insurrection. It remains to be seen the extent to which the revolutionaries have illusions in 'democratic' imperialism or how far their opposition to

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imperialism takes on the form of Islamic radicalism. To defeat the TNC and its imperialist backers the revolutionary forces must continue the armed struggle at this point directly against imperialism, and all the pro-imperialist factions of the national bourgeoisie squabbling for the imperialist franchise, to finally win national independence and set the example for the other Arab states in their ongoing national, antiimperialist revolutions. The only road to liberation is forward from the Arab national revolution to permanent revolution and the Socialist United States of North Africa and the Middle East!

August/September 2011
certain. It will have to subordinate the armed democrat insurgents to keep Libya as an oil colony of the EU and in doing so prove that the way forward is a complete break with imperialism and its bourgeois agents in Libya. Its obvious that the outcome in Libya is far from settled. The TNC (or its successor) is balanced between imperialism(s) and the hostility of the popular uprising to imperialism(s) on the ground. It will have to negotiate between the different imperialisms, notably the US which needs more bases in its contest with China for Africa, China's multi-billion investments in Libyan oil, and the desperation of declining France, Italy and Britain to sign and enforce preferential agreements, on the one hand, and an armed populace that is now carrying the hopes of advancing the Arab revolution, which has the power to demand a radical redistribution of the oil profits, on the other. In other words the TNC (or its bourgeois successor) will be a Bonapartist regime trying to do the impossible in a global capitalist crisis with rising inter-imperialist rivalry over oil etc namely, reconciling the two sides of the basic contradiction, revolution and counterrevolution, that is now becoming activated regionally, continentally and globally.

From national democratic revolution to permanent revolution

he Libyan revolution is the reopening of a national democratic revolution during a global capitalist crisis in which there are no national solutions to the national question. It is a national revolution against Gaddafi who has run for 42 years a national bourgeois crony capitalist regime negotiating terms for sale of oil with imperialism and pocketing the profits for his family, tribe and cronies. Gaddafi froze the national revolution by acting as imperialism's bourgeois agent in Libya. He masked the brutal nature of his regime behind the fiction of 'socialism'. His response to the protests in Benghazi in February exploded the myth that the regime was popular, progressive or anti-imperialist. A Bonapartist caught between the Arab Revolution and imperialism, he opted for imperialism in the hope that he could negotiate a new deal around the 'war on terror' against al Qaeda. It was his decision to annihilate the opposition that caused the armed insurrection that within 6 months was able to defeat Gaddafi's forces on the ground. Those who wanted to subordinate this armed rebellion against Gaddafi to a military bloc with him against NATO ignored the reality that NATO was taken by surprise by the Arab Spring and forced to act to suppress an armed revolution from spreading to the whole of North Africa and Middle East. By helping to take out Gaddafi as their rogue dictator' they hoped to wipe their hands of him, regain control of the revolution, and impose a more suitable pro-imperialist regime with 'democratic' credentials. However, this plan by imperialism to divert the reopened national revolution to a 'democratic' transition is far from

The global imperialist crisis

The global crisis facing imperialism is in direct contradiction to bourgeois democracy. The crisis of falling profits means that the price of oil becomes critical in capitalisms return to profitability. The imperialist demand for oil at a time of global crisis will allow no room for substantial democratic reforms, especially with the damage to oil production during the war. This is an important point, because the social imperialists think that even in the midst of the crisis the TNC can free up frozen Libyan funds so that goods can be paid for to meet the immediate needs of the Libyan masses and 'buy' legitimacy for the new regime overseeing the 'democratic transition'. The TNC blames imperialism for not releasing these funds and risking the failure of the 'democratic transition'. They have illusions in imperialism to deliver democracy in Libya and do not see that imperialism cannot deliver democracy when it is driven to restore the rate of profit. In the wider global economy this fits with the liberal bourgeois view that 'austerity' is a policy option not a precondition for capitalist survival.

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Thus the TNC regime installed in place of Gaddafi has no room for manoeuvre. The NATO powers, particularly France and Italy, are scrambling among themselves for new oil contracts that freeze out a surgent China. They have already signed deals with the TNC which has in turn said it will honour all of Gaddafis contracts. Italy and France are declining imperialisms and will quickly resort to military invasion to enforce their contracts. Britain is a major financial centre that is now faced with the beginnings of popular opposition to its austerity measures and will also deploy its troops to protect its interests in Africa and support the US in its rivalry with China. They will also demand that the TNC regime stops the flood of refugees to the EU. China in Africa is pursuing an imperialist policy and is now the most influential great power in that continent. It has billions invested in Libya to develop oil production and infrastructure and has belatedly along with Russia recognised the TNC in an attempt to protect its assets. If the TNC turns its back on China we can expect it to look for support in other sections of the Libyan bourgeoisie. It won't back Gaddafi's crony capitalism directly as he is a spent force with the African Union coming out against him. But some of Gaddafi's faction could easily re-emerge to promote preferential deals with China in the same way that it has done deals with other fake left bourgeois factions in Africa like ZANU-PF to swap scarce and valuable minerals for rapid infrastructure development. China then, is in a good position to strike a deal to swap oil in exchange for rebuilding the now war ravaged infrastructure of Libya. Thus the global capital crisis means that weak declining imperialist powers such as France and Italy will put strict terms on the TNC regime which will not allow economic independence of Libya and impose austerity and state repression on the people at the same time that China will offer much more preferential investment to develop the economy. This is likely to create rivalry between factions of the Libyan bourgeoisie jockeying to serve competing imperialisms. No doubt France and Italy have their champions in the TNC, but who will champion China and Russia and win the admiration of Castro and Chavez?

August/September 2011
The armed peoples militia has shown that it is has only recently come under a unified command, with Misrata and the Western mountain insurgents remaining largely outside the Benghazi command. Much has been made in the capitalist media of the dependence of the popular militia on NATO, and the gutter press has engaged in jingoistic tales of special ops leading the fight. This is rubbish. Imperialism intervened in Libya to prevent the insurrection from turning into a rebellion. For this reason is did not arm the rebellion to allow it military superiority. Its objective was to take away Gaddafi's military advantage and force him and the TNC to negotiate a solution. Gaddafi did not oblige, and nor did the revolutionary fighters submit. While NATO helped to bring about the defeat of Gaddafi as necessary to contain the revolution, it and the TNC its new agent, has not gained control of the revolutionaries. In particular the Misrata fighters and those of the Western Mountains made up of both Arabs and Berber are refusing to take orders from TNC appointees. The ongoing battle to destroy the Gaddafi forces will favour these independent forces and limit the ability of NATO and the TNC to determine the outcome in imperialism's favour. For the first time in the Arab revolution we now have an armed peoples militia that has removed a dictator and created the conditions for the national revolution to become permanent! We must honour the revolutionary spirit of the revolutionary fighters especially its youth ranks who have born the brunt of battle and paid the price in human life of the campaign to defeat Gaddafi. One battle has been won, but two battles remain. These battles are conjoined. The first is to stop imperialism imposing a new neo-colonial regime through the TNC. The second is to fight to create a workers and peasants republic that will complete the anti-imperialist revolution as a socialist revolution. We need to continue to call on the people's militia that actually exists on the ground to refuse to disarm, to form their own organs of self-government, to form a national workers and soldiers assembly with the tasks of controlling and planning the national economy, and to carry the revolution forward to a complete break with imperialism and all of its local bourgeois agents of all colors and creeds. So we offer a program for the revolutionaries and support those among them who are prepared to fight to retain their arms and form a

The insurgent masses

The other side of the contradiction is the Arab Revolution, not limited to the popular militia in Libya.

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popular militia to defend their February victory and open the road to their October.

August/September 2011
trial for watching videos of the Arab Spring and the regime is holding down food prices in fear of an uprising. In South Africa the popular front ANC regime is under attack from its opportunist Youth League under the pressure of the millions of black youth raging against the imperialist recolonising of Africa behind the 'humanitarian' UN resolution 1973. Will there arise in time a revolutionary Marxist organisation in all of these countries that is capable of leading permanent revolution? The onset of the many mass movements rising up to oppose the austerity measures of capitalism in crisis are met everywhere by autocratic regimes or popular fronts that prepare the masses for defeats. To open the road to revolution we revolutionaries must devote our utmost energy and commitment to urgently rebuilding a revolutionary international.

The Libyan revolution needs the victory of the Arab Revolution

All the big questions are ahead of us not behind. NATO did not turn the Arab revolution into a counterrevolution. It has yet to put a lid on this revolution. The questions are: Can imperialism facing deepening crisis concede reforms sufficient to meet the expectations of the revolution? We say no. The global crisis of capitalism in its extremity cannot fulfil the demands of the democratic revolution, it will be forced to resort to boots on the ground to disarm the democratic revolution. Will the revolutionaries agree to subordinate themselves to a new regime that does not renegotiate all the oil contracts and meet the demands for a democratic constitution? No! The first test will be to reject the constitution drafted by the unelected TNC in collusion with imperialism! If this imposed we say it will be necessary to counter-pose a revolutionary Constituent Assembly which allows for every citizen, male and female, above the age of 16 years to participate. How will the victory of the Libyan revolution affect the Arab revolution in Egypt, Tunisia, Palestine, Syria? We say that it will strengthen those who are prepared for armed resistance against those who hope that pacifism will lead to a UN intervention. Whither the Zionist regime? Already the Zionist regime is in crisis as its borders on all sides are less secure. It is lashing out in the West Bank and Gaza because it knows no other way to survive but fears outright attacks will push the Arab revolution further. The large middle class demonstrations against price rises have tiny minorities in them that are pro-Palestine, so it remains the Arab revolution, not left Zionism that will bring down Israel. Will the Arab revolution fuel uprisings in Sub Saharan Africa? The anger of the impoverished youth masses is ready to explode. Mass demonstrations in Swaziland and Malawi have been put down by brutal police force. In Zimbabwe socialists are on

Why we need a revolutionary party

Revolutionary party and program are essential conditions for permanent revolution. A revolutionary program only exists because of the fusion of theory and practice in a party organisation. Such a party based on democratic centralism can test the program in struggle and keep it alive. Our program comes from the experience of the Bolsheviks and was continued by Trotsky and the 4th International up to his assassination in 1940. That program contains the lessons of revolutions, both successes and failures. We say that in the epoch of imperialism oppressor countries continue to oppress other countries such as Libya. Therefore so long as imperialism prevents the fulfilment of the national tasks of economic independence, land reform, bourgeois democracy etc then the national question is still on the agenda. The national democratic revolution to realise its objectives must pass over to a socialist revolution. We call this process permanent revolution. It is the class question as national liberation can only mean proletarian liberation. Only the working class leading the poor peasants and all oppressed people can break with imperialism and its national bourgeois agents. What passes for Bolshevism today is insufficient to keep that program alive because it is not part of the working class and does not recognise its historic agency as we have seen in the case of the Arab revolution. Most of the remnants of self-proclaimed Leninism or Trotskyism have retreated from the proletarian dictatorship and opt for postmodern brands of bourgeois and petty bourgeois socialism. It is no wonder this new batch of Mensheviks is heavily infused with social imperialism in

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attributing to imperialism (NATO/UN) or its agents (Gaddafi) an historic progressive role rather than the popular masses leading the national revolution. Therefore the urgent task in this current global capitalist crisis is to rebuild a new international Bolshevik party based on democratic centralism and the program of the Fourth International of 1938 that is able to intervene decisively in all struggles and test its program as capable of being the guide to socialist revolution today.

August/September 2011
The crimes of Gaddafi and his cronies, and the alleged crimes of the revolutionary forces, to be judged by Libyan peoples' courts, not the imperialist International Criminal Court! For opening of the borders between all the Arab states from Tunisia to Syria! For the national, ethnic and cultural rights of historic peoples such as the Berber; for full democratic rights to all migrant and displaced peoples! For equal rights of women and youth! For socialisation of oil and banks as part of a national plan to develop the economy as part of the wider economy of the whole region. For a Socialist Federation of Workers Republics of North Africa and the Middle East!

A program for permanent revolution in Libya

HUMANIST WORKERS FOR REVOLUTIONARY SOCIALISM (USA) COMMUNIST WORKERS GROUP (Aotearoa/NZ) REVOLUTIONARY WORKERS GROUP (Zimbabwe) REVOLUTIONARY (Austria) COMMUNISTS FOR LIBERATION

Refuse to disarm; disband the Gaddafi army, form a popular national militia! For the formation of local, regional and national councils of action to implement the immediate needs of the masses for food, health and housing; for equal participation of women and youth; for a Workers and Soldiers Assembly! For a Workers' and Farmers' Government! UN and NATO out of the country; all imperialist trade ties revoked and all contracts cancelled; return Libya's assets; seize non-compliant imperialist assets; socialisation of all privatised assets! Down with the TNC/Imperialist draft Constitution! This Constitution is imposed by imperialism not the revolutionary masses! Boycott the ratification of this Constitution! For a Revolutionary Constituent Assembly!

Note from the RKOB: While we fully support the resolutions line and programme for the Libyan Revolution we want to point out that we do not share some formulations in the resolution (e.g. we consider the Gaddafi-regime not as semi-fascist but as bourgeois-bonapartist; we characterise the British SWP as centrist, not left-reformist). We also believe that the sentence The Libyan revolutionaries () had little choice but to enter into a military bloc with NATO against the semi-fascist Gaddafi. is misleading. In fact it was a weakness of the Rebels that they did not look for an alternative strategy and did not issue a strong appeal to the mass movements in the Arab countries and the international workers movement for volunteers and material and military aid. September 5 2011

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August/September 2011

British Riots:

From Looting the Expropriation

The recent uprising by youth in several cities in Britain is a clear symptom of deepening capitalist crisis. The bourgeois right wing predictably condemns the young rioters as criminals for destroying life and private property. They are frightened of the working class rising up and expropriating them. The left cannot agree on the riots because after years acting as spectators of events the youth rebellion has taken them by surprise. Years of arguing for the unionisation of youth in the unions, of fighting for shorter hours to create more jobs, has been overtaken by capitalisms crisis. The left is torn between welcoming these riots as rebellions promising future revolutions, or lumpen expressions of depoliticised behaviour. It was left to the lone voice of veteran Jamaican activist Darcus Howe on a BBC interview to call the riots an "insurrection" like those of "Syria, Clapham, Liverpool and Port O Spain, Jaimaica", as part of the "nature of the historical moment". In our view, the decline of the labour movement under the chauvinist union bureaucracy, has thrust the youth as the most marginalised and oppressed sections of the working class forward as the most militant elements of that class. They are predictably the spontaneous reflex of the deepening contradictions of British imperialism in crisis in a period of decline. Their response is not that of class conscious workers but of alienated workers facing a deepening crisis. Its not enough for the revolutionary left to launch a slogan 'from Riots to Revolution'. Revolutionaries have to chart an escape route from the depths of capitalist alienation to the heights of socialist revolution. Ruling class response
The reaction of the ConDem regime reveals the panic of the ruling class. The ConDems condemn the riots as mere 'criminality' so as to obscure their political and economic roots. By criminalising the riots they justify a massive police and legal clampdown out of all proportion to mere 'crime'. Four years in jail for putting up a facebook page 'inciting riot', or two years for 'receiving' a looted bottle of water, are the sort of sentences designed to deter Generation Zero from staging a Tahrir Square in London. The ruling class faces a crisis of legitimacy followin g the mounting public outrage at the Murdoch hackers, the banks and rich getting richer, as they impose massive austerity measures aimed at destroying the social wage. The young unemployed and migrant workers have little respect for a corrupt and blatantl y hypocritical ruling class. That is why the ruling class responds with racist, chauvinist and proto-fascist attacks to defend its dying system by dividing, demonising and smashing those who are capable of overthrowing it.That is why the fascist gangs of the English Defence League strut back onto the streets to assert the chauvinist rights of British workers against those unruly mobs that threaten law and order. And that is why Professor Starkey was allowed on BBC to promote the race hatred of Enoch Powell blaming migrants for destroying British society. The riots were "Shopping with Violence by Whites [who] have become Black and talk with a Jamaican Patois. Of course language or culture is not really the problem for the proto-fascists in Britain, they are afraid of the rioters staging a rising up taking control of the streets and 'looting' the means of production.

Liberals and Social Democrats

The social democrats want to distribute the blame for the riots fairly. This is in keeping with their distributional analysis of capitalism. At least the moral blame is fairly shared. They see British capitalism in a state of moral decline caused by corporate larceny and so on. Ed Milliband the Labour Party leader says that corruption at the top leads to crime at the bottom. The rioters are overwhelmingly young, poor and unemployed and that is hardly their fault. For the liberal left this leads to anti-social behaviour caused by the disorganisation if not disappearance of the working class, and the individualisation or fragmentation of workers. The riots have no political content and no progressive element at all. Bourgeois liberalism requires citizens to act rationally and responsibly to enable democracy to function. Unless workers act with a definite political purpose in mind

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(such as voting Labour) they cannot be political actors. Putting a post-modern slant on this liberal 'rationality', Bauman says that capitalism no longer shapes working class identity as wage workers but rather as consumers. He says consumption is identity. What motivates individuals is not consumption of the means of subsistence to enable them to work, but rather consumption as a means of realising their social identity. Post-modernism offers no way out of this 'irrationality' because there is no identifiable social structure to change. Consumption is not seen as the product of capitalist alienation whose 'rationality' can be contested and overthrown by proletarian revolution. Alienation is reproduced on a daily basis as part of the expropriation of surplus value. Workers become separated from their work, their product, from others and from themselves. The result is the production of the 'alienated bourgeois subject' who can only operate in a 'rational' capitalist market and bourgeois democracy. Riotous behaviour that challenges this market/state framework of property ownership and equal exchange thus appears as 'irrational' and 'meaningless'. Zizek is not far behind Bauman invoking Marx and Hegel in support of post-modern meaninglessness. Marx is already back in favour so Zizek tries for Hegel as well. He writes off the rioters as a 'rabble'. This is why it is difficult to conceive of the UK rioters in Marxist terms, as an instance of the emergence of the revolutionary subject; they fit much better the Hegelian notion of the rabble, those outside organised social space, who can express their discontent only through irrational outbursts of destructive violence what Hegel called abstract negativity. Zizek also cites the self-proclaimed Marxist philosopher Badiou who argued that we live in a social space which is increasingly experienced as worldless: in such a space, the only form protest can take is meaningless violence. It is not surprising that the European postmodern philosophers can declare that the bourgeois subject is not materially reproduced by global capitalism beset by contradictions, crises, unemployment and austerity, but is instead the lost in an irrational 'worldless' social space. They are, after all as intellectuals, lost in the same 'worldless social space' shared by all alienated bourgeois subjects.

August/September 2011
Radical anti-capitalists
Radical anti-capitalists do believe that a 'social space' called capitalism still exists and shapes the behaviour of individuals as workers and consumers. The British SWP response to the riots saw both the disorganised nature of the riots and also their 'deeper political' causes. The riots are a sort of spontaneous anticapitalist rebellion against unequal exchange or market relations where bosses' profits rise at the expense of workers wages and jobs. They quote Martin Luther King :riots are the voice of the unheard. Anarchists also typically take this view. Rioting is inherently revolutionary because it is a response to perceived capitalist inequality, unemployment, police violence, racism and so on. It is the reverse side of the 'shopping with violence' right wing explanation of the riots. Unfortunately this prevailing fetishised exchange view on the left cannot go deeper than working class spontaneity as an explanation of the riots. What these radical anti-capitalist views have in common is the belief that the working class can become spontaneously class conscious due to its perception of class relations as unequal exchange relations. Spontaneous anticapitalism arises from the conception of capitalism at the level of exchange relations. If that is how capitalism works then you can see it and spontaneously fightback. But this is not a Marxist anti-capitalism because for Marx exchange relations are inverted production relations resulting from 'commodity fetishism'. Therefore the spontaneous critique of capitalism at the level of exchange leaves capitalist production relations hidden and unchallenged. Instead of critiquing this market fetishist view of the riots, David Harvey gives it a Marxist gloss. He says that capitalism today can only survive by looting. If the rioters are feral it is because capitalism has become feral. Harvey argues that modern capitalism still extracts surplus-value during production, but that its main method of extracting value today is to steal it in the process of exchange. Naomi Klein takes a similar line. For Harvey and Klein capitalism based on theft is morally bankrupt. It cannot survive without looting. In the excitement of the aftermath of the 'riots' the Harvey provides a non-Marxist argument to justify the actions of the 'rioters' as no more than reflections of a capitalist system defined as based on looting.

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By confining his argument to exchange relations Harvey cannot provide a material framework for a working class morality other than 'looting back'. He sells Marxism short. As we shall see capitalism was born by looting. It was born feral, or as Marx says covered with blood and dirt. But what makes capitalism especially degenerate today is a longer story. Capitalism is facing a existential crisis expelling masses of living labour it cannot exploit. If you don't have a job or social wage you don't have an income you can live on, then you have to buy and sell on the black economy for your subsistence. So the riots were not a mindless consumerist 'outburst' but an historically necessary form of behaviour on the part of the most exploited and oppressed workers thrown out of capitalist production; a fight for survival, a fight to overcome alienation, and at the same time the birth pangs of socialist revolution as the dialectical expression of a future human universality.

August/September 2011
spontaneous rebellion, the young rebels break the spell of their alienated existence. The task then is how to turn riots into sustained rebellions and then into revolutions. First we have to distinguish between ruling class looting to amass wealth, and working class looting to subsist.

Looting for Britain

Despite the moral high ground workers can take when facing the organised looting of workers taxes and social wage by the corporates, bankers, and their state, it is still the morality of the slave trader. Looting for Britain has a long history but the British bourgeoisie took it to new heights. When was the British bourgeoisie not feral? It came into existence by looting Ireland, India and Africa. Slavery was looting. Marx called the original looting primitive accumulation, the conquest and sacking of communal or lineage societies of the new world of its gold, silver, sugar, cotton etc as currency and raw materials to give capitalism to get it's start. This looting was regarded by the looters as a natural right since the primitive societies looted did not have bourgeois property rights and their land and wealth was seen as free for the taking. Not only that, looting was justified in exchange for the benefits of civilisation. What an supreme irony that the British ruling class looted the ancestors of todays Afro-Caribbean youth out of Africa 300 or more years ago. And that the morality that the ruling class finds missing in the rioters today was that which justified the original looting by their own merchant capitalist forebears in the name of civilisation.

Marxist critique of 'riots'

The bourgeois response to riots left, right and centre all come from the ruling class standpoint. The proto-fascist right speaks for finance capital in defence of 'civilisation' against the barbarian hordes. The liberal democratic bourgeois or petty bourgeois labour bureaucrats are angst ridden by a system in moral decline. The radicals represent the declining petty bourgeois or layers of the working class who see the riots as the explosive effects of a deeper crisis in neo-liberal capitalism. But what is that crisis? Are we now living in the epoch of feral capitalism? Of rampant looting by the ruling class? An absence of morality at the top that is now reflected at the bottom? But is this crisis new in the history of British imperialism? Such scenarios from extreme right to extreme left take in only the appearances of capitalism, i.e. how it presents itself at various surface levels of society. We need to go much deeper. Marxists are able to see right through the 'riots' to the fundamental contradiction of capitalism in decline that drives young workers out of employment being forced to seize capitalist property to survive. For workers to live, capitalism must die! Unlike bosses' looting which is not an act of desperation, rioters looting is spontaneous expression of what is necessary to end capitalism, the wholesale expropriation of capitalist property as the basis for building a socialist society. It is the instinctive response to capitalist alienation that separates young workers from production, from their products, from others and from themselves and then throws them onto the scrap heap as a outside of capitalism. In one act of

Looting back no answer

The moral high ground of 'looting back' is really a moral swamp because what is wrong with capitalism goes much deeper than 'looting' or any 'feral' behaviour. Capitalism got its start by looting and continues to extract value by 'unequal exchange' - buying cheap and selling dear - but this is not the rotten heart of capitalism. Capitalism is based on the systematic exploitation of labour power and extraction of profits from surplus labour in the process of production and equal exchange. Capitalists buy labour power at its value on the market and extract surplus value (more than the value of the wage) from it during production. Looting of labour power means paying less than its full value in the market. Class struggle determines the value of labour power as the value necessary to reproduce it. If it was about looting on an everyday

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basis then capitalism would not have survived 300 years. It would have been overthrown by massive workers riots and uprisings a long time ago. Capitalism survives because it masks its exploitation as natural and necessary and the fundamentally unequal relations between workers and capitalists appear in the marketplace as equal - an honest days work for an honest days pay. Thats why when capitalism does openly loot this is seen as an aberration and not a normal condition of capitalism itself but the actions of rogue capitalists (neo-liberals, bankers, bad bosses, imperialists, corrupt politicians etc) and on the other side, rogue workers (gangs, lumpens, criminals, communists etc) - today rioting unemployed youth who take something for nothing. The question of who gets away with looting (or doesn't get caught) becomes a matter of bourgeois morality and bourgeois statistics and in the last analysis bourgeois class power. Bosses point the finger at some workers and call them criminals. Workers point the finger at some bosses and call them criminals. When workers do more than point the finger but burn down bosses property, this is a declaration of potential working class power so the bosses understandably unleash the maximum power of their state.

August/September 2011
misidentifying of value as a property of labour to its product the commodity is a 'fetish'. It is the basis of bourgeois ideology that is reproduced in the production process. But more importantly it is also a process by which the alienation of value from the worker also alienates that workers from [capitalist] production, and the [commodity] product, and as a result from his or her [class] co-workers, and ultimately from his or her 'self' [productive power]. The result is that the 'alienated bourgeois subject' becomes the 'sovereign individual' whose 'identity' (to use the pomo jargon) is the sum of the value of the commodities he or she owns. Hence a system of law and order is derived from these private property rights which then justifies locking up those who loot. Therefore, whoever steals the value of commodities breaks bourgeois property law because the commodity is the property of the owner, capitalist or worker. Since exploitation is not based on looting, looting back cannot end exploitation. Moreover as we have argued looting back criminalises and atomises the working class and makes it easier for the ruling class to repress. To justify reclaiming the full value of the commodities that the workers actually produce with their commodity labour power they need to first become conscious of their alienation from that value in the first place. Marx said that this cannot happen spontaneously because of 'commodity fetishism' can only be revealed by the scientific critique of capital that exposes and explains the true historically specific nature of capitalism. Thus workers need to become class conscious and understand that the only form of looting that can take back the labour value expropriated by the capitalists is organised workers' expropriation of capitalist property. Workers need to assert a new social relation that breaks out of capitalist alienation and transforms looting into expropriation of the value that the capitalist class extracts from our surplus labour. Fetishised looting is no more than a spontaneous expression of alienation yet the roots of alienation cannot be removed unless capitalism itself is expropriated.

Alienation and bourgeois ideology

Most workers are still caught up in the bourgeois ideology of capitalist exploitation as unequal exchange. Their anti-capitalism is still trapped within bourgeois morality and statistics. Their solution to capitalist 'exploitation' is to 'equalise exchange', fair shares, fair pay, fair profits, fair taxes via economic 'democracy' and so on. Even the so-called revolutionary left is typically committed to its view of capitalism as potentially one of fair exchange relations and feels the need to condemn both greedy bosses and lumpen workers. Hence their politics is trapped within the alienated and fetishised appearance of capitalism as exchange rather than productive relations and a morality of equal exchange. However, for Marx, exchange relations are inverted production relations which makes it appear that exploitation occurs in the market and not in production. Marx's great discoverty was that the commodity labour power was capable of producing more value than its own value. Hence it was sold at its value but created surplus value. The failure to recognise this masks the reality that workers produce value which is then expropriated and then appears as a property of the commodity owned by the capitalist. Marx called this 'commodity fetishism' because the

Capital crisis and class struggle

As Marx wrote long ago, capitalism creates the new socialist society in its womb. It throws the unemployed into the reserve army of labour to act as a pool of surplus workers competing to drive down wages and living standards. Thus capitalism cannot operate without a pool of unemployed who are living below the poverty line. And as capitalism develops the forces of

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production it also begins to destroy them. Each crisis of overproduction destroys jobs to restore profits. An increasingly growing layer of society is excluded from the 'social space' of production into the 'social space' of the surplus population. Migrant workers, youth in particular, are hardest hit. In most countries youth unemployment is approaching 50% or more. Austerity and welfare cuts mean that young workers of generation zero are forced to live below the poverty line. To survive the economically superfluous most beg, borrow or steal. This forces them to appropriate the value of commodities as small traders or indulging in crime. Just as poverty is endemic to capitalism, crime, looting, and trading in the black market, is the necessary response so that impoverished unemployed workers can survive in capitalist society. This is anathema to capitalism not a 'crime' as such, but because it is a foreshadowing of the socialist principle of redistribution on the basis of need. Unfortunately capitalist society still exists, the unemployed cannot perform work to meet their needs, and random looting has unintended side effects. But where other workers are harmed this is a matter for workers' tribunals not the bosses' courts. In stealing to survive they may harm small traders and other workers. Small traders who are robbed risk losing their jobs and their businesses and ending up in the reserve army. Similarly, looting capitalist corporates may put jobs of the workers they employ at risk. For that reason, where looting is justified for the survival of the working class it should be organised and directed at only those multinational corporates where items can be resold to provide the means of subsistence (food, clothing, rent etc), and where the employees of these big corporates are strong enough to defend their jobs, despite losses due to looting. Thus the working class needs to unconditionally support the young rebels where they are looting to survive because this is spontaneous class action which challenges capitalism and the authority of the state. Youth have come to the rescue of a labour movement that has been bought-off by more than a century of imperialist privilege, by co-option into parliamentary politics, and by swallowing whole the exchange level ideology of economism (strike for jobs and wages) and social democracy (vote for a party that will pass laws to create jobs and pay a living wage). The youth have sounded the opening shots of the working class fight back against the global crisis of capitalism. The ruling class understands this clearly which is why it has brought down the state forces onto the rioters. The fascists know that their time has come. The working class is on the move and must be stopped. The BBC makes the Powellites respectable again, and the fascist gangs are taking to the street

August/September 2011
While capitalism creates the embryo of socialism in its womb, Marx also said socialism will not be born until capitalism has exhausted its productive powers. When capitalism destroys the productive potential of the youth it has reached that point. Marx saw the productive capacity of workers as a force of production. So not only is capitalism destroying nature in the usual sense of the ecosystem, human production is a key part of that ecosystem. The old labour movement hidebound by a century of labourism and social democracy is now pushed aside by these new militant layers fighting for the survival of nature against the destruction of capital. But as we have argued in relation to the Arab uprisings and the European risings, the objective necessity of resistance to the destruction of the global capitalist crisis faces a crisis of leadership able to chart the course from riot to revolution. What is missing is the leadership of a revolutionary Marxist party that takes the critique of capitalism to its rotten heart - the alienation of labour from productive workers into the hands of the capitalist class. What is missing is the Marxist party that acts as the collective proletarian 'scientist' applying the knowledge of capitalism in practice and constantly testing and revising that knowledge through struggle. Marxism makes it clear that there can be only one response to the capitalist crisis and the barbaric attacks on workers by the ruling class and that is socialism. Capitalism has run its historic course and its long run tendency to destroy nature and society to survive demands that it be overthrown. The British riots along with all the other uprisings taking place today are a catalyst for class consciousness. The riots have shown us how the working class to survive must reproduce itself both materially and ideologically independently of the ruling class and prepare to dig the grave of capitalism. Workers must unconditionally defend the spontaneous rebellion of young workers fighting for their subsistence. We must form united fronts and defence committees against the forces of the state and their fascist paramilitaries. Workers must build councils or soviets everywhere through occupations and strike committees so that all workers of all genders, races, nationalities, ages, experience, and so on, participate fully. Wherever these organs exist Marxist revolutionaries must raise their collective voice in the building of a revolutionary international movement, raising demands, organising tactics, mobilising support, forming international links, propagandising, agitating, and revolutionising the roots of capitalist alienation

Revolutionary Party
The upsurge of youth around the world shows that the young workers of Generation Zero have nothing to lose.

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August/September 2011

What We Fight For

Overthrow Capitalism
Historically, capitalism expanded world-wide to free much of humanity from the bonds of feudal or tribal society, and developed the economy, society and culture to a new higher level. But it could only do this by exploiting the labour of the productive classes to make its profits. To survive, capitalism became increasingly destructive of "nature" and humanity. In the early 20th century it entered the epoch of imperialism in which successive crises unleashed wars, revolutions and counter-revolutions. Today we fight to end capitalisms wars, famine, oppression and injustice, by mobilising workers to overthrow their own ruling classes and bring to an end the rotten, exploitative and oppressive society that has exceeded its use-by date. capitalism in crisis, led by a revolutionary Marxist party, produces a revolutionary class-consciousness.

For a Revolutionary Party

The bourgeois and its agents condemn the Marxist party as totalitarian. We say that without a democratic and a centrally organised party there can be no revolution. We base our beliefs on the revolutionary tradition of Bolshevism and Trotskyism. Such a party, armed with a transitional program, forms a bridge that joins the daily fight to defend all the past and present gains won from capitalism, to the victorious socialist revolution. Defensive struggles for bourgeois rights and freedoms, for decent wages and conditions, will link up the struggles of workers of all nationalities, genders, ethnicities and sexual orientations, bringing about movements for workers control, political strikes and the arming of the working class, as necessary steps to workers' power and the smashing of the bourgeois state. Along the way, workers will learn that each new step is one of many in a long march to revolutionise every barrier put in the path to the victorious revolution.

Fight for Socialism

By the 20th century, capitalism had created the preconditions for socialism a world-wide working class and modern industry capable of meeting all our basic needs. The potential to eliminate poverty, starvation, disease and war has long existed. The October Revolution proved this to be true, bringing peace, bread and land to millions. But it became the victim of the combined assault of imperialism and Stalinism. After 1924 the USSR, along with its deformed offspring in Europe, degenerated back towards capitalism. In the absence of a workers political revolution, capitalism was restored between 1990 and 1992. Vietnam and China then followed. In the 21sst century only Cuba and North Korea survive as degenerate workers states. We unconditionally defend these states against capitalism and fight for political revolution to overthrow the bureaucracy as part of world socialism.

Fight for Communism

Communism stands for the creation of a classless, stateless society beyond socialism that is capable of meeting all human needs. Against the ruling class lies that capitalism can be made "fair" for all; that nature can be "conserved"; that socialism and communism are "dead"; we raise the red flag of communism to keep alive the revolutionary tradition of the' Communist Manifesto of 1848, the Bolshevik-led October Revolution; the Third Communist International until 1924, the revolutionary Fourth International up to 1940 before its collapse into centrism. We fight to build a new, Fifth, Communist International, as a world party of socialism capable of leading workers to a victorious struggle for socialism.

Defend Marxism
While the economic conditions for socialism exist today, standing between the working class and socialism are political, social and cultural barriers. They are the capitalist state and bourgeois ideology and its agents. These agents claim that Marxism is dead and capitalism need not be exploitative. We say that Marxism is a living science that explains both capitalisms continued exploitation and its attempts to hide class exploitation behind the appearance of individual "freedom" and "equality". It reveals how and why the reformist, Stalinist and centrist misleaders of the working class tie workers to bourgeois ideas of nationalism, racism, sexism and equality. Such false beliefs will be exploded when the struggle against the inequality, injustice, anarchy and barbarism of

Class Struggle is the bi-Monthly paper of the

Communist Workers Group of New Zealand/Aotearoa, in a Liaison Committee with Humanist Workers for Revolutionary Socialism. Online at: http://redrave.blogspot.com Phone 0064 0272800080 Email cwg006@yahoo.com http://communistworker.blogspot.com/

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